Wretchard has had a couple of interesting posts lately touching on the issue of “opting out out” of modern American society as it becomes increasingly hostile to traditional values. Although I have significant differences with the “traditional values” often espouded by the religious, I do think there’s something going on here.
In this post, Wretchard quotes a correspondent as follows:
I will not buy French products, even though in the past I was a huge fan of Izod shirts. I have a German car, but it is the last I will ever own once my lease is up in a year. I do not watch television, nor do I subscribe to the local newspaper due to its’ clear ideological bent…
Neither Anne nor I are particularly religious. We don’t go to church. I’m a self-described atheist. We don’t have any children to protect. Nevertheless, elements of the above litany strike home with me. Thanks to TiVo, my television watching habits are highly focussed on a vanishingly small segment of the shows being produced, and I’m never exposed to the stuff a lot of other people are watching. I don’t watch television news, or subscribe to the local newspaper. Etc.
By and large these weren’t explicitly ideologically driven decisions. I simply wound up using technology to filter out the elements of popular culture that I found distasteful. My time is too precious to me to waste it wallowing through cultural products that are dull, uninteresting, insulting or flat-out dishonest.
And yet… I’m not sure I like the potential consequences of trying to build the cultural equivalent of a redoubt and then retreating behind its walls. Sure, it’s more comfortable in here right now, but I can see the metaphorical barbarian hordes gathering outside. I’d be perfectly happy to leave them alone; the problem is that they don’t seem willing to grant me the same courtesy.
Anne Speaking:
The internet has made it much easier for me to get thorough, immediate news and commentary from virtually unlimited sources. Why should I sit through a TV news program to find out what usually amounts to information that is already 24 hours old (or more) compared to online sources, extremely fluffy with very little actual content, and the “punchline” is kept for the very end of the program. It takes them 30 minutes (including commercials) to tell me 3 minutes worth of news that I could have read online the day before.
The newspaper in the same. Our local one is the San Jose Mercury News, which is apparently considered one of the top 5 newspapers in the nation. I find that fact pretty scary, honestly. We decided to cancel our subscription when we realized we were only reading the comics and the rest was creating a fire hazard in our home. Besides, I can read the Murk online for free.
And, as Kyle said, thanks to Tivo, I have watched perhaps two commercials in the past year. We don’t watch live TV anymore; we don’t have to.
I think of this “opting out” as a logical extension of the “consumer’s vote”. Don’t like it? Go somewhere else and take your money with you. Evian is my favorite bottled water, but I don’t drink it anymore because it’s a French product. I’ve also developed a taste for Australian wines, and those of my home state (which are better than French wines anyway).
In the case of news, I’m taking my valuable time elsewhere. News media want my attention, and I have already evaluated the various options and decided where my attention is best focused. Their advertisers will presumably get a clue, eventually.
Honestly I’m not sure why TV news has survived as long as it has into the internet age. It must be because the majority of Americans still haven’t turned to the internet for their news. TV is a longstanding habit in our culture, but frankly ours isn’t even on most of the time these days.
